If we were to grip the moon to stop its motion around the earth and then let go will the moon crash into earth

Answer 1

Yes, that's exactly what would happen. That's how a rocket in orbit re-enters the atmosphere; by firing its engines in the reverse direction to slow down its orbital motion.

Answer 2

Yes, it would. Nothing else would matter. Not the position of the Sun, not anything. If the Moon just stopped moving around the Earth, it would fall and crash into Earth, obliterating all life on Earth. Lucky for us it is impossible to stop it in real life.

Answer 3

Well the moon is in a vaccum so it's not affected by gravity in the sense it would "crash" into earth, it may be pulled in by earths gravitational field, or since the earth is moving so dang fast it might just get back into orbit, or maybe it would catch the gravitational field only slightly and be flung off into space. At any rate it wouldn't matter as much to you because you'd be trying to figure out how to survive the massive floods that would be caused by the lack of the moons gravity controlling the tides. It does more for us than you think.

Answer 4

Your question presumes that the act of gripping the moon will stop it. It won't. The moon's inertial energy in orbiting the Earth is huge, so it would take enormous force to stop it relative to Earth. That force couldn't just come from grabbing it -- no grabber we could produce at this point could withstand the force and even if it could, the Earth's rotation would get tossed into turmoil before anything else.

Let's just assume for the sake of discussio that we could just make the moon stop. Then, without the force of it's motion keeping it in orbit, you're right: the earth and moon would collide.

Professional Astronomers and others: feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Answer 5

Gravity is an captivating tension between any gadgets with mass. whilst an merchandise that may not supported by potential of something falls because of the stress of gravity of yet another merchandise, it is asserted to be in loose fall. An orbit is basically a process continuous loose fall. as an occasion, the Moon is falling in direction of Earth. besides the undeniable fact that, it additionally has an orbital velocity from the momentum won in the time of its formation that helps it to fall around Earth with a trajectory that follows a similar curve as Earth's floor. because of the fact those paths are parallel, the Moon continuously falls around Earth without ever touching it.

Answer 6

Yes . . . your scenario would cause the Moon and the Earth to fly directly toward and impact each other.

What keeps the Moon in orbit is its inertia (speed) as it tries to fly away from Earth, balanced with the Earth's gravity attempting to pull the Moon toward it, or Centripetal Force: any force that causes an object to fly in a curved path.

Once the Moon's orbital velocity is reduced to zero, as in your example, it has no inertia with which it can escape Earth's gravity, thus, KABOOM !

There you have it.
Have fun!

Answer 7

Yes. Provided you could just magically stop its orbital velocity relative to earth, it would crash down.

Answer 8

depends of the moment of the release
-since sun is also forcing moon to a certain degree
-whether or not is earth approaching or departing moon..
can't really figure it out until will happen :)

Answer 9

well it depents on the wind currents in space...once its gravitational pull is released...the object goes on and on until something hits it (if anything DOES hit it) most likely not though.....